Poverty and wrath: A study of The Tin Flute

Poverty and wrath: a study of The Tin Flute W.B.THORNE The Tin Flute,1 Gabrielle Roy's FrenchCanadian Grapes of Wrath, chronicles the brutalizing effect of poverty upon an heroically realized minority group living in Saint-Henri, a slum suburb of Montreal. The heroes of this novel are the poor, the little people, the midgets of life's circus who sell themselves in exchange for some slight material security. The only apparent solution to the terrible poverty they suffer, Roy proves conclusively, is futile, vicarious escape, expressed in many forms, all of which culminate in the storm clouds of the Second World War. The main characters in this painfully beautiful social document are presented as striving desperately to escape a situation which they have not created, one which has been imposed upon them pitilessly by mechanical laws of economics and a rigid class structure which traps the poor of Saint-Henri in a ghettolike existence ignominiously overshadowed by arrogant Westmount. In her novel, Gabrielle Roy is narrating the odyssey of people victimized by a society dedicated mainly to the pursuit of happiness only of the "haves." For this reason The Tin Flute is reminiscent of American novels of the twenties and thirties, which, like Dreiser's, adopted a deterministic outlook and stressed man's mechanical reaction to environmental forces beyond his understanding and beyond his control . In Roy's novel, the ''have-nots" must eke out a tortured existence of fruitless self-inquiry and self-deception. Escape is possible, but its price is very high; only those who can brutally crush human emotions and reactions not only in themselves but in others, can lift themselves above the mire of slums like Saint-Henri and reach toward a material success otherwise denied them. For Gabrielle Roy, the "two solitudes" do not describe the usual notion of the two Canadas; instead they describe Westmount and SaintHenri , the rich and the poor, and the tragic gulf Journal of Canadian Studies which lies between them. For the poor, the only way to climb toward Westmount is to join the national army and receive, in exchange for military service, the little they demand of life. Some characters, however, are able to transcend the limitations of environment, if only spiritually, and reach toward intuitive perception of a mode of behaviour and state of future being as yet denied to their fellows, a state of being which will ultimately elevate the minority group to which they are committed. The soi.,disant Christ figure in the novel, Emmanuel Letourneau, experiences an uplifting insight into the nature of his people's predicament , but he lacks a lyrical presentation and remains too rooted in the viewpoint of his class to achieve in any real sense a panoramic social vision. In The Tin Flute, the social vision is presented kaleidoscopically, through the eyes of a series of characters, so as to produce a cumulative vision, rather than a single, coherently developed lyrical perception of a social truth. The novel is an epic, however, in at least one sense of the word, for it possesses epic breadth and epic vision, and generates overtones of meaning which carry its scope beyond the Lacasses and the Letourneaus, beyond SaintHenri and Westmount, to make a universalizing statement about human nature. It is clear that Jean Levesque, Emmanuel Letourneau, and the Lacasses are victims of social forces beyond their immediate control, but the response of the main characters in the novel to social determinism is quite different. Though the problems of Saint-Henri are projected unresolved into the war, a naissant social unionism is hinted at in the reactions of Emmanuel, Azarius, and Alphonse to the forces that drive them to seek security in war. Most of the characters in The Tin Flute, in fact, seek relief from their inarticulate humiliation, but their patterns of escape converge, at the end of the novel, in the futility of war. The Tin Flute seems to sound a horn symbolizing the approaching fall of the walls of Jericho, a call to battle warning of new expectations and the need for a radical realignment of economic facts. It seems to hint at the social 3 ferment of the...